Tracking robots on the stock market

The number of companies involved in robot manufacture that are listed on the US stock markets is tiny, and knowledge of the market is even smaller, writes FRANK TOBE, publisher of The Robot Report.

In early 2008, I asked my Merrill Lynch broker for a list of stocks of American robot manufacturers. He couldn’t provide me with more than two. So I went online with Bloomberg and found a list of 120 companies involved with automation. When I researched them, there were only a few in the U.S. and fewer still where robotics was the principle business.

Their list of 10 robot stocks included ABB, Sony, Panasonic, Philips, Raytheon, Aetna, Dover, Moog, Elbit and iRobot.

Globally, there are slightly more than 250 publicly-traded robot manufacturers. In the U.S. and Canada, the list is small but quite interesting. Here are 16 – in addition to the 4 shown above – to whet your appetite:

Since my experiences in 2008, and because of a personal belief that the robotics industry is the place to invest for the future, I have carefully compiled a proprietary list of global publicly-traded stocks reflecting all aspects of the robotics industry. I monitor and report upon these stocks monthly in a performance/comparison chart, the Global Robo-Stox Comparison to the NASDAQ Index, the latest version of which can be seen and reviewed on The Robot Report website.